The challenges that logistics and transportation businesses face in the increasingly digitised global market are numerous. These include rising costs, human resource shortages, regulatory burdens and ever-growing customer expectations. But the right digital transformation investment can help to meet these challenges, especially where excellent customer service is concerned.

Chatbots are machine-learning AI systems that basically offer a digital customer service agent through your website - popping up a dialogue box to ask if the customer needs help. During working hours the chat facility can be manned by a live agent, and out of this timeframe, an automated chatbot can take it over. Chatbots are a prime example of how data science can help logistics and transportation businesses to deliver better customer service and internal efficiencies at the same time. In fact, 42% of customers say that they prefer chatbots to traditional contact methods. This helps to explain why 51% of respondents in a supply chain business survey carried out by Eyefortransport said that they were already applying chatbots.

What benefits does chatbot technology offer the logistics, transportation and delivery industries?

Quick and accurate answers to customer questions at any time of day. For example, "Where is my parcel?' or "How can I change my delivery options?" The chatbot can easily substitute the role of the human agent, saving time, boosting engagement and improving the service overall.

The opportunity to offer a superb brand experience from the start and to nurture customers along the sales funnel.

A new way to facilitate customer website navigation and to reduce the website bounce rate.

The ability to efficiently process unqualified and low priority requests, without taking up valuable time of 'live' customer services teams.

Data analytics that allows digital teams to keep improving customer experience and to fix any issues as they occur.

The technology also offers specific benefits for the logistics and transportation industries when combined with other, existing, technologies such as GPS tracking. For example, a delivery driver could ask a chatbot how they could avoid a traffic jam if the GPS system had flagged up a problem on the road ahead. And if that same driver was visiting an unfamiliar logistics warehouse and identified two possible routes to get there, the chatbot could help by providing the quickest way - reducing time and cost.

The breadth of knowledge and understanding that ELEKS has within its walls allows us to leverage that expertise to make superior deliverables for our customers. When you work with ELEKS, you are working with the top 1% of the aptitude and engineering excellence of the whole country.

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